WSJ Misses Value of Gun Control Filibuster

19 Apr 2013

At two different points during the tense weeks of the gun control debate, the Wall Street Journal missed the value of the gun control filibuster initiated by Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY), Ted Cruz (R-TX), and Mike Lee (R-UT).

For example, on April 9–in a column titled “The GOP’s Gun Control Misfire”– the WSJ sarcastically described the “faction of Republicans” supporting filibuster as “GOP wizards [who took] the onus of Senate Democrats and made Republicans the media’s gun control focus. Mr. Reid is now bellowing about Republicans blocking a vote, and Democrats such as Mark Pryor (Ark.), Mary Landrieu (LA), and Mark Begich (AK), don’t have to declare themselves on provisions that might be unpopular at home.”

But the group of Sens. willing to filibuster had already gone beyond Paul, Lee, and Cruz, to include Jim Inhofe (R-OK), Marco Rubio (R-FL), and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), among others.

When the Manchin-Toomey ‘compromise’ was given a vote on April 17, those in opposition had gone from a “faction of Republicans” to 46 Senators–Republican and Democrat–all of whom had come to see the danger the legislation posed to 2nd Amendment rights.

Yet even after this, the WSJ criticized those who had stood against the bill from the start–describing them as “the Rand Paul-Ted Cruz faction that sought a filibuster.”

When Breitbart News spoke with a Senate Aide to a Republican supporting filibuster, we were told: “By putting up a hurdle last week that had to be crossed just to debate the measure–which concerns a constitutional right–we showed it was vital that the nation be put on notice regarding how big this bill was.”